The present invention relates to communicating data between medical devices and a processing unit. More specifically, the present invention relates to prioritizing and trafficking simultaneous interfering telemetric communications by multiple medical devices with a processing unit.
There have been considerable advancements in both the field of electronics and medicine, such that there is presently a wide assortment of commercially available body-implantable and non-implantable electronic medical devices. The class of medical devices now includes pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators, neural stimulators, and drug administering devices, among others. Today's state of the art medical devices are vastly more sophisticated and complex than early ones, and are capable of performing significantly more complex tasks. The therapeutic benefits of these devices have been well proven.
It has proven useful for medical devices to have the capability of communicating data wirelessly with a processing unit that in turn is capable to process, store, and/or display data provided by the medical device. The data provided by the medical device may be real-time or recorded data. The processing unit may also transmit signals to the medical device in order to provide some control over the medical device. This communication is achieved by wireless telemetry, which involves wireless data transfer between the medical device and the processing unit or another medical device using radio frequency (RF) signals, infrared (IR) frequency signals, or other electromagnetic signals.
At present, a medical device attempting to communicate information may open a communication session ad hoc. As medical devices become more prevalent, the possibility increases that multiple medical devices (either in the same patient or in different patients) will attempt to communicate simultaneously. Various communications technologies currently exist that allow multiple communications to be processed simultaneously. For example, communications in time division multiple access (TDMA) systems are assigned blocks of time in which to transmit data, communications in frequency division multiple access (FDMA) systems are assigned channels within a frequency in which to transmit data, and communications in Quad-QAM modulated systems employ aspects of both TDMA and FDMA systems. However, since the frequencies available for telemetric communication by medical devices are limited, the potential for simultaneous communications from multiple medical devices attempting to communicate during the same block of time or on the same channel also increases. This may cause errors in communications between a medical device and another medical device or a processing unit. For example, one medical device may be prevented from communicating if the channel is occupied by another medical device, which is also communicating. In addition, the communications between one medical device and the processing unit may be interrupted by another medical device attempting to communicate with the processing unit. This is especially troublesome if an urgent communication to or from a medical device is prevented or interrupted by another medical device try to access the same transceiver or similar host.